“That you and I are similar. You’re a high-born beta wolf, son of the Pack Alpha. What could you possibly think you have in common with me, an omega? You know what it’s like to be such a disgrace that your parents leave the Pack in shame? Or what it’s like to be so vulnerable that you have to give up your freedom to whatever chauvinistic pig wants to claim you?” I asked.
He was so out of touch with normal life; I doubted he had ever had to want or work for anything. He was friendly enough, but he had the kind of easygoing personality that only developed when someone had never known any kind of hardship.
“I know, I’m the whining rich boy. And you’re right. All things considered, I have it good. But I’m also a high-born beta, son of the Pack Alpha, like you said. I might not know the type of rejection you have, and I’m sorry about your parents; leavingyou was a shitty thing to do, but I do know what it’s like to feel shame over presentation. Cole is next in line for Alpha succession for a reason. My mum is an alpha; everyone assumed I would be too. I assumed I would be. It was pretty devastating for everyone when, on my first shift, we learned I was a beta,” he told me. “It’s not the same. I know,” he said.
His smile dipped slightly; his dimples were no longer prominent.
“That must have been hard,” I said.
I knew what the shock of an unexpected presentation felt like. The aftermath of my first shift may have been more violent and world-shaking, but I knew what it was like to have everything you thought about yourself, about your future, gone in an instant.
“It was. Not as hard as for you, of course, but… yeah, I guess I’ve never met anyone that could relate, in some way,” he said.
I took a drink; the bottle was already near empty.
“So what happened after?” I asked curiously.
“A lot of silence. It had an impact across the whole Pack. Cole was pissed. She didn’t want to be Pack Alpha, but I’m not sure you’ve noticed we’re kind of similar ages,” he said.
“I had noticed,” I said. It was obvious that Cole was the much younger sister.
“Yeah, Cole was a surprise baby that shouldn’t have been possible. Granny apparently didn’t think she could still get pregnant. Anyway, there’s twenty years between Mum and Cole. Cole will be Pack Alpha one day, and she also needs to provide an heir. I fucked up her future too,” he explained and finished by pointing to his empty glass and to my cider. “Another?” he asked.
“Yeah, sure,” I answered, and he turned back to the bar to get a bartender's attention.
Cole was gone. I had been paying Darren so much attention that I hadn’t noticed her leave the bar.
I scanned the bar in front of me, hating how much I panicked at the absence of her presence. Was it that instinctively I knew I was safer with her around? It was an odd tightness in my abdomen. I even subtly scented the air searching for her.
“Over there, to your right,” Darren said, and I flinched as if I had been caught doing something I shouldn’t have. He took my empty bottle from me and replaced it.
“She’s just there, see,” he said, gesturing to the right.
I found Cole. She was sitting at a table, talking with a man and a woman.
It was like she felt me watching her, and she looked up, our eyes locking for a moment until she returned to her conversation.
“I wasn’t looking—”
“Don’t worry about it. She won’t let you out of her sight tonight. You don’t have to worry about that. Cole’s a Sandstorm; she takes her responsibilities seriously,” he told me.
“I didn’t ask to be a responsibility,” I said, taking a drink from the new bottle.
“No, you were a surprise for us all. No one saw her claiming you as a possibility. Least of all Mum—she was pissed,” he said.
“I know,” I replied, remembering that first extremely awkward encounter.
I turned my attention back to Darren, curious.
“You said you being a beta fucked up Cole’s future? How is being Pack Alpha one day so terrible?” I asked. Cole not wanting to be Pack Alpha was not something I had ever thought of.
“It’s a bit personal, I mean, it’s not private—it should have been, but was kind of a public thing, so—” He sighed heavily. “Fuck it, you’ll learn eventually—”
“Are you going to tell me?” I interrupted.
“Cole was kind of seeing someone. It was serious, but then she became next in line, and it wasn’t the sort of match the council as a whole would approve of for the title of Alpha’s Mate,” he said.
“How serious?” I asked.
